Tongue Sandwiches and Bagel Days: Sex,Food and Mind‐Body Dualism

The substantive content of our paper is that of mind‐body dualism, which we explore through food metaphors. However, our primary aim is to use these food metaphors to explore the difficulties in going beyond dualistic thinking. We do this by focusing on dualism as a learnt state of being. Accordingly, and using an analysis of pedagogies of the everyday that takes account of particular communities of practice, we seek to demonstrate the (re)production of dualistic frameworks in organizational life. Our conclusion returns to a political agenda that is concerned to go beyond the inevitable hierarchization implicit in dualistic construction. Here we present the case for the retention of the binary and we indicate the work that now needs to take place if we are interested in developing interpretations that express the fluidity of gendered identities.     

Pregnant Bodies in Social Context: Natural,Disruptive, and Unrecognized Pregnancy

This article examines the role of social context in the construction of meanings attached to the pregnant body. Analyzing interviews with 42 women who, during the time of the interview, were either pregnant or had given birth to a child within the last 12 months, I explore (1) the role of social context in assigning social value to the pregnant body; and (2) how the meaning attached to pregnancy changes as pregnant women move from one social context to another. I suggest that the role of social context is central to our understanding of how pregnant women are perceived and evaluated by others.     

Low‐Income Latina Mothers' Expectations for Their Pregnant Daughters' Autonomy and Interdependence

Forty‐five pregnant Latina adolescents and their mothers (23 English‐speaking, 22 Spanish‐speaking) were videotaped conversing about feelings and plans related to the adolescent's pregnancy. The prevalence of the mothers' messages about the daughter's reliance on the family unit (interdependence) and the daughter's self‐sufficiency (autonomy) were related to adolescents' reported and observed feelings about their pregnancies, pending motherhood challenges, and their relationships with their mothers. Increased interdependence messages appeared to denote positive family relations among Spanish‐speaking dyads, in that these adolescents reported more positive feelings about their pregnancy, perceived that their mothers felt more positive, and perceived more maternal social support and open communication. The role of interdependence messages was less clear for adolescents from English‐speaking families. Higher levels of maternal autonomy messages had positive associations for both groups, in that it was related to higher disclosure about concerns about childcare needs among adolescents from English‐speaking families, and about educational goals for adolescents from Spanish‐speaking families.     

Gender‐specific Effects at Work: An Empirical Study of Four Countries

Using a questionnaire based upon the work of Geert Hofstede, we examined the effects of gender on the following three work‐related dimensions: the importance of work‐related goals, the preference for performance rewards and the preference for management styles. The study was conducted for a multinational corporation headquartered in Germany with branches in China, Japan and the USA. Even though some inter‐country differences in the importance of work‐related matters are identified and intra‐country gender differences exist in work goal evaluation, overall we find that men and women exhibit similar preferences concerning performance rewards and managerial styles. Finally, for the three dimensions studied, our data do not confirm the stereotypical work‐related gender differences often reported in the literature and popular press.     

Women leaders,self‐body‐care and corporate moderate feminism: An (im)perfect place for feminism

This article offers self‐body‐care as an aspect of corporate moderate feminism and a manifestation of postfeminism for women leaders. It explains how postfeminism as a bodily practice surfaces through women leaders' body work and how women ‘top' leaders strategize to stabilize their credibility by identifying their own and other women' body work needs and the steps they take to meet these. Self‐body‐care extends understandings of body work as part of postfeminist governmentality and contributes to understandings of moderate feminism as that which deflects and reflects feminism and constrains and empowers subjects. As such self‐body‐care offers an (im)perfect space for disruption and for Gender and Organization Studies (GOS) scholars to pursue the implications and potential of postfeminism. We call for women elite leaders to be part of feminist futures and illustrate self‐body‐care as an aspect of corporate moderate feminism by highlighting complexity in the postfeminist thesis and reflexively re‐examining two of our previous published empirical studies of women ‘top' leaders.     

Preadoption Risks,Family Functioning,and Adoption Secrecy as Predictors of the Adjustment of Filipino Adopted Children

Using a correlational multivariate research design, partial least squares (PLS) was applied to examine the direct and indirect influence of pre-adoption risks, family functioning, and adoption secrecy on the adjustment (which is defined in this study as the internalizing and externalizing behaviors) of Filipino adopted children. Thirty-two sets of Filipino adoptees and their respective adoptive mothers participated in the study. Family functioning was found to predict the adjustment of Filipino adopted children while adoption secrecy predicted family functioning. Adopted children's perception of their family functioning and adoption openness buffer the impact of the early adversity experienced by the adopted children. Implications on the clinical practice and adoption practices in the Philippines are discussed.     

Children's Agency: ‘Getting By,Getting Back,Getting Out and Getting Organised’ Under Welfare‐to‐Work in Australia

One in four children in lone‐parent households in Australia lives in poverty. Welfare‐to‐work policies designed to 'activate' lone‐parents into the labour market is one approach that successive governments have employed to address this issue. This article argues that activation policies that target parents risk overlooking the implications for the children in these families. It concludes that more understanding about how poor children employ agency within the constraints and conditions of their lives could inform policy that better supports their well‐being, values their contributions, and is more sensitive to the diverse and changing needs of families. It draws on child‐centred participatory research with twenty‐six children in Australia that found they were active agents across a range of areas that included strategies for getting by, aspiration for the future, and acts of resistance.     

Leadership succession and the performance of nonprofit organizations: A fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis

Leadership succession is critical to the performance of nonprofit organizations. Existing research has mostly treated leadership succession as an instantaneous event, and it has examined the independent effects of certain factors on organizational performance. However, little research has focused on the combinations of causally relevant factors. This article integrated organizational life cycle, resource dependence, and institutional theories, as well as the organizational fit literature, to explain how contextual and strategic factors combine to affect postsuccession performance. A fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) was used to analyze 15 succession events in Chinese environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The study identified four pathways to good NGO performance after succession. It also highlighted that it is not succession per se but the succession context (i.e. founders' control, board governance, professionalization, and political environment) and the strategic orientations of the successor that affect postsuccession performance in nonprofit organizations.     

Abortion Policy and Vulnerable Women in the United States: A Call for Social Work Policy Practice

Repressive abortion policy in the United States creates undue burdens for groups of vulnerable women, including adolescents, women of color, women living in rural areas, and women with economic disadvantages. Repressive abortion policy creates a two-tiered system of access to reproductive health care that is a particular disadvantage to vulnerable women. In this study, current policy is discussed with examples of such policies outlined in three areas: insurance coverage and Medicaid restrictions, mandatory waiting periods, and mandated state counseling. Social workers' role in policy practice is emphasized in regard to advocacy and abortion policy.     

Career Counseling Strategies to Facilitate the Welfare‐to‐Work Transition: The Case of Jeanetta

Changes in welfare policy require recipients to find employment and created a need for effective career counseling strategies. Welfare recipients face both environmental and personal barriers that affect employability and career development. Issues such as the employment market, the availability of needed community resources, and the stress of being a single parent need to be understood before appropriate career counseling can occur. In this article, the author discusses possible barriers to career counseling and suggests effective career counseling methods for individuals who receive public assistance payments.     

Seeing the Case Clearly: File‐Work,Material Mediation,and Visualizing Practices in a Dutch Criminal Court

In Dutch criminal courts, judges and their assisting clerks spend significant amounts of time doing file‐work in preparation for the court hearing: a practice they often call “visualizing the case.” This practice is distributed over clerks and judges and materially mediated: the legal case file enters into face‐to‐file interaction as both a text and a material object. This article aims to unpack what techniques clerks and judges draw on in order to come to “see the case clearly,” while at the same time it elaborates on the renegotiations of these largely paper‐based practices when court workers are confronted with the digitization of case files.     

Work Psychology,Women and Stress: Silence,Identity and the Boundaries of Conventional Wisdom

It is argued that there has been a close connection between work psychologists and management which has produced a discourse about stress. In this discourse workers are positioned as victims whose suffering may be overcome through behavioural technologies. Having drawn attention to the assumptions, limitations and silences of the literature, recent debates surrounding gender and the politics of identity are considered in order to outline the possibility of a complementary approach to the study of gender and work stress. Theoretical and practical issues are addressed.     

Volunteer Work and Hedonic,Eudemonic, and Social Well‐Being

Using two waves of panel data from the National Survey of Midlife in the United States (MIDUS), we examine the relationship between volunteer work and three dimensions of well‐being: hedonic (e.g., positive mood), eudemonic (e.g., purpose in life), and social (e.g., feeling of belonging to the community). We test for the effects of volunteering measured as a binary and a continuous variable. Results show that volunteering enhances eudemonic and social well‐being (but not hedonic well‐being) although the number of hours contributed makes no difference. Conversely, people who have greater hedonic, eudemonic, and social well‐being are more likely to volunteer and, in the case of hedonic and eudemonic well‐being, volunteer more hours.     

Organising Work and Home in Same‐Sex Parented Families: Findings From the Work Love Play Study

In this article we present findings from the Work, Love and Play (WLP) study: a survey completed by 445 same‐sex attracted parents across Australia and New Zealand. Comparisons of household division of labour are made between a sub‐sample of WLP participants, who were currently cohabiting with a same‐sex partner (n = 317), and 958 cohabiting opposite‐sex parents surveyed as part of a major Australian study, Negotiating the Life Course. This comparison showed that same‐sex couples divided household labour significantly more equally than heterosexual parents, and lesbian couples also shared parenting tasks more equally. Qualitative findings from the WLP study indicate that, for many same‐sex couples, major decisions around who gives up paid work and how many hours parents choose to work, as well as decisions around work/family balance, are negotiated on the basis of couple's preferences and circumstance rather than an assumption that one parent will be the primary child carer. It is speculated that this finding highlights an important point of difference between same‐sex couples and heterosexual couples where the division of household labour is often based on the assumption that the mother will almost always be the primary child carer and homemaker. The research is a collaborative partnership between La Trobe University, Deakin University, The University of Melbourne, and Relationships Australia Victoria.     

Work,Family, and Mental Health: Testing Different Models of Work‐Family Fit

Using family resilience theory, this study examined the effects of work‐family conflict and work‐family facilitation on mental health among working adults to gain a better understanding of work‐family fit. Data from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS) were used to compare different combinations of work‐family conflict and work‐family facilitation. Results suggest that family to work facilitation is a family protective factor that offsets and buffers the deleterious effects of work‐family conflict on mental health. The results across these outcomes suggest that work‐family conflict and facilitation must be considered separately, and that adult mental health is optimized when family to work facilitation is high and family to work and work to family conflict is low.     

Micro politics of Social Safety Net Programmes: The case of the Food‐For‐Work Programme in Bangladesh

A number of studies have established that politics has a role in shaping and implementing Social Safety Net Programmes (SSNPs) and, conversely, SSNPs also influence national or local politics. This study qualitatively analyzes the micro level political discourses of the Food‐For‐Work programme, one of the top 10 SSNPs in Bangladesh, using the concepts of access, institutions and agency under livelihood framework. The analysis of the findings reveals that the programme is not effective in terms of the stated objectives of reducing poverty, but rather serves the interest of political elites. Beneficiary access to the projects depends on categorical membership, ability to participate and gender, which lead the programme to be reduced to subsidized infrastructure projects.     

Four Paths to Spirit at Work: Journeys of Personal Meaning,Fulfillment, Well‐Being,and Transcendence Through Work

Spirit at work involves profound feelings of well‐being, a belief that one's work makes a contribution, a sense of connection to others and common purpose, an awareness of a connection to something larger than self, and a sense of perfection and transcendence. This exploratory qualitative study revealed 4 paths leading to spirit at work: the always there path, which had a continuous nature; the coming together path, which resembled a growing and integrative journey; the transformative events path, which was in response to an awakening or crisis; and the contextually sensitive path, which was dependent on the work environment. Implications for career counseling are discussed.     

The Effects of Work Demands and Resources on Work‐to‐Family Conflict and Facilitation

This article uses a differential salience‐comparable salience approach to examine the effects of work demands and resources on work‐to‐family conflict and facilitation. The analysis is based on data from 1,938 employed adults living with a family member who were interviewed for the 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce. The results support the differential salience approach by indicating that time‐ and strain‐based work demands show relatively strong positive relationships to work‐to‐family conflict, whereas enabling resources and psychological rewards show relatively strong positive relationships to work‐to‐family facilitation. The availability of time‐based family support policies and work‐family organizational support is negatively related to conflict and positively related to facilitation, thereby supporting the comparable salience approach.